Commercial Management Intern Review

Overall it was a really enjoyable and worthwhile internship. I have learnt a lot about the industry and what it's like to work in a company in the city. There was a great group of interns from varying backgrounds, although most came from Economics or Languages degrees (especially for the Investment and Commercial Mangamement schemes), and I can see myself keeping in touch with several. HR put on some great social events that meant we could meet the other interns and have enjoyable evenings out. You were assigned a desk to work on for the duration of the internship and as a result it was basically a 1-on-1 with your manager where he/she would assign you work or tasks to get on with during your internship. My manager also had weekly catch up meeting with me to see how I was getting on (although that will vary with your managers). For the first 4 weeks of the internship lectures/talks were integrated into our working day which was really useful and filled out the days, we had talks on asset management, finance, risk, regulations etc etc. The reason why I gave this a 7/10 and not any higher is that we were assigned desks to general areas we were interested in and as such you could end up on a desk that you werent necessarily hugely interested in. However that didnt bother me as the work I did was still insightful and stimulating and gave me a general insight into working life.

There is definately a very good company culture and ethos at M&G that you wouldnt necessarily find everywhere. My manager/team wanted me to learn and enjoy my experience and would tailor my tasks/work around that. They gave me work that was genuinely needed by the company and as the internship progressed where able to increase my responsibility to the extent that I was attending meetings by myself and reporting back to my manager afterwards. You could genuinely go up to anyone and ask to sit down with them over a coffee to have a chat about their job/the company or just to meet them. As an example, I approached one of the main fund managers and asked if I could have a brief chat with him to get an idea of his job etc and right away he offered to sit down and chat with me, something that some interns wouldnt be as able to do in other companies.

Managers were told about their interns beforehand and so had a chance to think of work/tasks to set before we even arrived. It felt very structured and organised between HR and managers and as such the managers were always at hand to help/give guidance if need be. Half way through the internship we had an assessed presentation and following it a half-way catch up with HR to feedback on how we were doing and what we could improve on. As I sat by my manager I could always approach him for advice and oftern did. They made it very clear that they wanted you to always approach them for help, however little the problem may be.

How busy you were did depend on what desk/area you were working with. The general consensus was that M&G has a very healthy working day, and most Commercial Management Interns days were roughly 9-5 and most Investment Interns were roughly 9-6. I always had work to get on with or projects to do but it didnt feel stressful or as if someone was constantly judging me to finish work quickly. At the same time if I was low on work I could always ask my manager for more work. My manager set me a project half way through my internship and so it was up to me to effectively manage my time. This is a big contrast to some of the investment banks where working 7am untill 9pm were the norm for interns. Your hourly wage at M&G probably works out as healthier then big investment banks as although they get paid more they are working a lot more hours.

Your responsability progressed as the internship progressed and increased if you showed potential and that you were capable to take on bigger/more important tasks. From the outset I was given real-life projects that although seemed trivial and basic (excel spreadsheet work) they were still necessary and required completing. As the internship progressed I attended meetings with my manager and towards the end I would attend meetings by myself and report back to my manager. My manager said that if the internship had carried on for longer he would have given me more responsability and bigger tasks as I had already shown I was capable and so you definately feel as if youve been given responsability.

This was very useful for giving me a broad overview and insight into working in the city for a major firm. I learnt what is expected of you in a 9-5 job, how you are expected to act, work ethic, networking skills etc all of which will be useful and applicable to any job I have in the future. The area I worked in was heavily excel based and as such I didnt develop specific skills whereas someone in the Investment Internship may have developed how to model certain data for example. As such what I did learn wasn't specific skills but more general, softer skills that I could carry through to any job/area that I persued in the future. As I am currently studying a degree in Economics I had a fairly decent knowledge of the basics of asset management already and so didnt learn e.g how to value a bond as I had already learnt that, what I did learn however was what kind of jobs an asset manager had or what e.g. working at the Dealing Desk would involve or what the fund managers get up to during the day.

I was on the Fixed Income floor and was surrounding by a fairly sociable, buzzing area. Obviously there were times when it was quiter then others but in general I was very happy with the office atmosphere. From what I heard though some areas of the office were more or less social, but that will be the same for any company.

It was a very well organised internship and I am very happy with how it was run. HR had organised several social and networking events throughout the internship and these added to our experience. Managmenet were aware of the interns they would be looking after and what was expected of them. Also HR organised several insight talks during the internship to give us a good insight into the financial sector and asset management as a whole.

I felt that I had been heavily invested in. The interview process included several stages of interviews and assessment centres and so it was clear they were taking this seriously, and little things like having nice food and drink out for us during the assessment centres meant they wanted to impress us. It was clear that on a social and extra-curricular level they had invested a lot of money into the social events and so it was clear they wanted us to enjoy our experience. The fact that we essentially had 1-on-1 training from our managers throughout the 8 weeks means you have invalubale and personal support and since there were only about 25 interns taken in this year there was a relatively small amount of us and so we felt valued (compared to somewhere like Barclays/JP Morgan where they may have an intern intake of more than 100 people). The company as a whole was aware of the intern intake and so if you met someone new on your floor or anywhere they would normally offer up their time to have a chat with us and answer any questions we had.

Having done an internship with M&G I am confident I will have strong future prospects. These internships are invaluable in terms of real life experience and proving to employees you can work at a company for a period of time. I will wait to hear whether I have been offered a graduate job after my internship but even if I dont get offered a job I would consider re-applying again/to other areas as to have recieved the internship in the first place they must have liked me to an extent and I feel as I would still like to work there in the future.

There wasnt a social scene with other placement students but thats not necessarily a negative. There were enough internal social events that were enjoyable and enabled networking.

I know the cost of living in London can be quite high but my family already live in London so that wasnt a problem for me. Socialising in London is obviously fairly expensive, but relative to the salary you can still enjoy yourself. Travel through TfL means it isnt too expensive and was fairly straightforward and my commute averaged £5/day.